It is often said that Kennedy was deeply concerned with the problem of
nuclear proliferation; the implication is that his efforts in this area--and
especially the policy that led to the 1963 test ban treaty--were essentially
rooted in this very basic interest. His policy on the Israeli nuclear question
is often cited as an important case in point. It is commonly argued (by
Seymour Hersh, for example) that because of Kennedy's profound commitment
to nonproliferation, he was firmly opposed to the Israeli nuclear program
and from the start put heavy pressure on the Israelis to end it.(1)

The evidence, however, shows that Kennedy's policy in this area was rather
lax, at least until 1963, when the Israeli question became bound up with
far more important issues. The idea, for example, that a May 1961 meeting
between Kennedy and Israeli prime minister Ben Gurion was a "major
disappointment" for the Israeli leader, in part because of the nuclear
issue, is not borne out by the records of that encounter. The meeting was
relaxed and the president was friendly, and this was in spite of the fact
that Israeli prime minister Ben Gurion made it clear that Israel was keeping
her nuclear option open; Kennedy, it seemed, was far more concerned with
appearances than with substance.(2)

The key issue had to do with the inspection of the Israeli nuclear facility
at Dimona. The Israelis agreed to inspections, but not to serious ones,
and the Americans went along with the charade. As McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's
national security advisor, later admitted, these inspections "were
not as seriously and rigorously conducted as they would have had to be
to get the real story."(3) The first inspection was arranged by the
Israelis "outside regular governmental channels." Two American
physicists, both European-born Jews who had fled to the United States during
the Nazi period, were invited to go on a guided tour of Dimona and reported
"no evidence of weapons-related activity." Although well aware
of what the Israelis were doing, Kennedy chose to take this as satisfactory
evidence of Israeli compliance with America's non-proliferation policy.(4)
In 1962, as Hersh himself points out, the U.S. government accepted an inspection
arrangement which "guaranteed that the whole procedure would be little
more than a whitewash, as the President and his senior advisors had to
understand: the American inspection team would have to schedule its visits
well in advance, and with the full acquiescence of Israel."(5) The
goal, according to the American who led the inspection team, was to find
"'ways to not reach the point of taking action' against Israel's
nuclear weapons program."(6)

And, in fact, far from getting involved in a kind of "war" with
Ben Gurion over Dimona, the issue was essentially put on hold until the
spring of 1963. Avner Cohen, who has studied these matters more closely
than anyone else, refers to the period from May 1961 to March 1963 as a
"long slumber."(7) It was only in mid-1963 that the Kennedy administration
decided to apply real pressure. But this had to do with the more general
policy the U.S. government was pursuing at the time. It was about to embark
on delicate and far-reaching negotiations designed to keep both Germany
and China non-nuclear, and the last thing Kennedy wanted was for Israel
to do anything that might upset the applecart.(8)

The basic point is that if the Kennedy administration had been committed
to non-proliferation as a fundamental and universal goal, it would have
opposed the Israeli program from the start. The fact that its policy in
this area was as lax as it was shows that the policy was applied in a highly
selective way--that it was driven by political far more than by arms control
considerations--and this in turn underscores the basic argument made in
the text about the importance of interpreting the 1963 test ban negotiations
in political terms.

2. Hersh, SamsonOption, p. 102, for the claim about the
meeting being a disappointment. For the evidence, see Avner Cohen, "Stumbling
into Opacity: The United States, Israel, and the Atom, 1960-63," SecurityStudies, vol. 4, no. 2 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 213-215.

Additional Note (added December 1998): Avner Cohen's book, Israel
and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) was published
shortly after this appendix was written. People interested in this general
subject should certainly read this very important new work, and might also
want to take a look at that book's internet
supplement (which contains, among other things, a number of original
documents bearing on this issue). That supplement was placed on the National
Security Archive's website in October 1998.